North Carolina Coast

 TRAVEL DAY 32 - Wrightsville Beach to Mile Hammock Bay

April 12, 2023

5.35 Hours/39.7 Miles

    I woke up, did my engine checks to prep the mechanical equipment for the day. For the first time ever I added a little oil to the engine, not bad for 144 hours of running. I have a small raw water leak that I cannot figure out. It's not a major thing but besides driving me bonkers, it is dripping a small amount of water down onto my starter and into the bilge, about a 1/2 cup a day. 

Wrightsville Beach

    Our target for today is Mile Hammock Bay on the New River just south of Camp Lejeune, a 5 plus hour run.  We passed numerous oyster farms.

Oyster Farms

    As we travel along the Intracoastal I am amazed at the staggering amount of wealth in this country. We pass multimillion dollar houses, one after another with $100K plus boats on the dock. 

Million dollar homes

    As we got closer to the Marine base at Camp Lejeune we could see a V22 Osprey Tilt Rotor airplane circling the area. What a cool aircraft with its rotors that turn up to make it half plane and half helicopter. 

V22 Osprey

    The anchorage at Mile Hammock Bay is part of the base and we needed to call the base to find out if they were having live fire exercises on Thursday. They were not scheduled, but if they were we would have to vacate the anchorage and get out of the area prior to 7 am because the area gets closed off.

Crabtraps

    We were one of two boats that pulled into the anchorage and 2 hours later we had 10 boats anchored for the night. We could hear "boom, boom" from artillery fire in the distance.

Mile Hammock Bay Anchorage

Wrightsville Beach to Mile Hammock Bay

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